Performer
Jeffrey Biegel, Piano

Program
BACH French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor “Appassionata”
CHOPIN Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
CHOPIN Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante, Op. 22
GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue

Composer, arranger, educator, and pianist Jeffrey Biegel performs a concert of solo piano classics, including works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Gershwin. Mr. Biegel’s recent performances include Giovanni Allevi’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Kenneth Fuchs’s Concerto Spiritualist, and Dick Tunney’s Peanuts Concerto.

About Jeffrey Biegel

Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters upon Mr. Biegel, for his achievements in performance, recordings, chamber music, champion of new music, composer, arranger and educator. Among his recent recordings and performances, Mr. Biegel performed the World Premiere of Giovanni Allevi’s ‘Concerto for Piano and Orchestra’ with Orchestra Kentucky and in Milan’s Teatro dal Vermes, recording with Orchestra Sinfonica Italiana. During 2018, Naxos released Kenneth Fuchs’s Grammy-nominated recording, “Piano Concerto: Spiritualist” featuring Mr. Biegel with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, and, he performed the World Premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’s “Concerto no. 2 for Piano and Orchestra” with the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, Stuart Malina conducting. In 2019, Grammy award composer, Dick Tunney unveils the new “Peanuts Concerto” for piano and orchestra based on music by Vince Guaraldi. Equally championing pop music icons, Mr. Biegel has brought Jimmy Webb’s ‘Nocturne for Piano and Orchestra’ to the public and, PDQ Bach’s ‘Concerto for Simply Grand Piano and Orchestra’ by Peter Schickele with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. The first solo digital recording on Mr. Biegel’s Naturally Sharp label will be released in 2019, and, in 2020, he will premiere Jim Stephenson’s first piano concerto, tentatively titled, “Water”- in both its life-sustaining and destructive forces.

A leading pioneer of concerto projects joining multiple orchestras as a model for commissioning new music in the 21st century, Mr. Biegel created the first largest consortium of orchestras in 1998 for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s ‘Millennium Fantasy’ premiered with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2000, followed in 2002 with Tony Award winning composer Charles Strouse’s ‘Concerto America’ with the Boston Pops, Lowell Liebermann’s ‘Concerto no. 3, Opus 95’, premiered with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (2006), William Bolcom’s ‘Prometheus’ for piano, orchestra and chorus, with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and Pacific Chorale (2010), Richard Danielpour’s ‘Mirrors’ with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra (2010), Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s ‘Shadows’ (2011) with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Jake Runestad’s ‘Dreams of the Fallen’ (2013) with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and Symphony Chorus of New Orleans, Lucas Richman’s ‘Piano Concerto: In Truth’ (2013) with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, recorded in 2014 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for the Albany label, and Kenneth Fuchs’s “Piano Concerto: ‘Spiritualist'” with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA) in 2016. An avid composer, Mr. Biegel’s choral music is published by the Hal Leonard Corporation, Carl Fischer, Porfiri & Horvath and The LeDor Group. Leonard Bernstein said of pianist Jeffrey Biegel: “He played fantastic Liszt. He is a splendid musician and a brilliant performer.” These comments launched Mr. Biegel’s 1986 New York recital debut, as the third recipient of the Juilliard William Petschek Piano Debut Award in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. He studied at The Juilliard School with Adele Marcus, herself a pupil of Josef Lhevinne and Artur Schnabel, and is currently on faculty at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, a City University of New York (CUNY).